Interesting stuff. I'm not sure I'll have time to do this, but I might.
If you want to get a good head start on cryptography, I highly recommend this book:
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh
It's a fascinating read even if you're not into crypto. The book itself light on mathematics, but the appendices contain things like the actual mathematical mechanics of the RSA algorithm, etc. for those so inclined.
Edit:
And for a much deeper and technical study:
Handbook of Applied Cryptography, Menezes, Oorschot, Vanstone
Freely downloadable for personal use.